


Coming Home

by laetificat



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory, happy ranch ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 10:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laetificat/pseuds/laetificat
Summary: Arthur rides back into their lives out of the blue.





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> so a while ago I saw someone on tumblr suggest happy ending!John/Arthur/Abigail on a ranch somewhere and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, even though I’m working on like four other fics right now this just took hold of me.
> 
> I also haven’t actually gotten past Chapter 3 in the game but I have been spoiled for part of the ending and it BREAKS MY HEART so I sort of. guessed. at some themes. so keep in mind this might be spoilery? but also please don’t spoil any more if you’ve finished the game!
> 
> (also omg thank you so much for all of your lovely comments and feedback on my fics so far, I'm sorry I haven't replied but I read every comment and each one makes my whole day.)
> 
> but yes, here it is, a sort of stream of consciousness of one happy ending among many. may it nourish you.

Arthur rides back into their lives out of the blue, unexpected. In fact he rides right up to where John is seeing to the hooves of one of the yearling colts, Jack playing with a set of wooden soldiers in the dirt nearby. John doesn't recognise his voice or the shape of his shadow, and just tells him that he'll be there in a moment -- 

And then Jack springs up and yells “Uncle Arthur!” and races across the yard. John stands and turns in time to see Arthur drop down off his horse and catch the boy mid-step and throw him up in the air.

Arthur has a few more scars and some grey in his hair and his beard, and maybe he's a little skinnier, but is otherwise the same.

John walks across to shake his hand, but Arthur refuses that and pulls him into a hug with Jack giggling on his shoulder, and everything comes rushing back with the smell of Arthur's skin and sweat and John sort of grips him, then pushes him away and walks into the house without saying a word.

But Abigail comes out to meet him and brings him inside, tells him to not mind John, and makes him supper and tells him to stop apologising, and offers to let him stay the night, there's a cot in Jack's room he can use.

Arthur takes her hand across the table and says that would be fine by him. For a moment Abigail remembers what Arthur looks like naked, and the sounds he used to make when she rode him, back when they were all young and stupid and free. How he always treated her gently afterwards, and made sure she found her own pleasure in the act.

And she smiles at him and pulls her hand away, folding it in her lap. Suggests they play a few hands of cards, like the old times.

John doesn't appear again until the next day, and that's just to take Jack hunting, because he's seen wild pigs rooting at the fence posts in the lower paddock. He doesn't look at Arthur or even give any sign that he's noticed him, but his expression is closed and thunderous. Abigail watches him leave with a frown on her face, then asks Arthur if, since he's around, he wouldn't mind chopping some wood for the stove?

And Arthur makes himself useful, chopping wood and hauling feed for the goats and the horses, and Abigail says well he might as well stay the night as well, since it's too dark to be riding out with no moon to see. 

John stays away the whole night with Jack, and they come back the next day with a bullet-riddled tusker slung over John's horse. John is filthy and still silent, but some of the anger seems to have gone out of his expression, and he doesn't stop Jack from running up to Arthur to show him the squirrel he shot all on his own.

Arthur looks over Jack's head at John and catches his eye, then ruffles the boy's hair and tells him he must be a fine shot because squirrels are a tough target.

He offers to help John skin and butcher the boar. John takes a moment before agreeing. They haul the pig into the barn and set to work; it’s not a small hog so it takes them some time, only talking to each other to ask for one tool or another. The air is close and warm and full of the boar’s stink, and after a while something between them begins to thaw. Arthur cracks a joke about the pig smelling worse than Bill on a hot day; John snorts out a laugh.

They work away the afternoon. Once the boar is hung and dripping and the hide staked out to dry, John suggests they head to the creek to wash off the gore rather than bring it in the house. 

The water in the creek is cold, swollen with meltwater coming down out of the mountains. They pretend not to be watching each other as they strip down to their underwear. Arthur notes the new scars stippling John’s sides; the way his skin has browned from the sun. John studies Arthur’s back as he crouches to dunk his head in the water, frowning at the sight of the jutting bones of his spine, the hollowness between his ribs.

John begins to head back; Arthur catches his arm. Asks him if there’s anything he can do. John doesn’t shrug him off, but meets his eyes.

Says no, there isn’t. 

Arthur lets him go. Thinks about leaving himself. But he doesn’t. Something tugs him back, and he slinks in the door like a cur and is rewarded by Jack coming up to him to show him a wooden horse that he still has from Uncle Dutch. 

On the way out to the barn to check on the boar carcass, Arthur begins coughing. He doesn’t stop for a minute or two, coarse deep hacking, and it’s bad enough that Abigail comes out to put a hand on his shoulder. He pats her fingers, tells her it’s an old illness that rears its head sometimes, something he picked up out on the trail. Says it won’t last. 

That night, he can’t sleep for coughing. By morning he’s feverish, but insists on helping Abigail carry feed out to the horses. When he staggers, almost drops the sack, she insists on bringing him indoors and dosing him with syrup. He tries to brush her off and tells her to stop fussing at him, but she looks at John over his head and in an unspoken agreement bundles him upstairs to their marriage bed. 

The next few days are a blur for Arthur; he fades in and out of awareness, only waking to cough and wheeze and be dosed with laudanum and mustard wraps. At one point he awakens and realises that he’s lying between John and Abigail, her arm across his stomach, his head pillowed on John’s shoulder. He tries to move and John reaches up to brushes his hair back from his forehead, as gentle as if Arthur was his own child instead of 10 years his elder, and tells him to go back to sleep. 

His fever breaks on the fourth day. His cough fades.

He suggests leaving the bed. Abigail refuses, saying she already lost a close friend to an illness like this and she doesn’t mean to lose another. John, across the room, smiles at her with a fondness that makes Arthur’s heart ache with jealousy and gladness mingled. 

Arthur grows used to it, lying between them at night. Gets used to the way John snores and how Abigail twitches when she dreams. Gets used to Jack leaping on them all in the morning to ask what’s for breakfast.

Eventually, he’s well, and there are no more excuses left. He seeks out Abigail and finds her in the parlor, mending some of Jack’s trousers. Arthur knows they make enough money with the ranch for her to be able to send out for a girl to do it, but she insists on doing it herself, a legacy of her independent upbringing. He sits beside her and asks her what they’re doing. 

Abigail knows he doesn’t mean the work. 

She reaches out and puts a hand on his, then leans forward and kisses him, slow and soft. Her lips taste as sweet as he remembers them. 

When he opens his eyes he sees John leaning in the doorway, watching them. And smiling. 

Arthur freezes, but John answers his question before he asks it by walking across the room and putting his fingers under Arthur’s chin and kissing him. He’s rough where Abigail is soft, smelling of leather and horse ointment. Familiar.

Abigail sends Jack out to ride his pony with one of the ranch hands and leads Arthur and John upstairs, one hand in each of theirs, claiming what’s hers. 

And she does claim them, over and over, Arthur beneath her and John behind, caressing her breasts and her stomach, no longer the flat planes of a girl but scarred and soft and glorious. And she watches them as they take their pleasure in each other, stroking her hands over Arthur’s back as he moves inside John, drinking in John’s cries with her lips on his. It’s not perfect -- Arthur is still a little awkward, not fully able to accept that he has been given such a gift, but Abigail reassures him with a laugh and tells him to hurry up and undress her. 

The afternoon is long and warm with the slanting sun through the windows, and Arthur sleeps more soundly afterwards than he has for many years. 

With unspoken agreement, Arthur moves his things out of Jack’s room and into Abigail and John’s. He takes up work on the ranch, helping John break and train the horses, helping Abigail fix up the outbuildings and keep the accounts. He brings Jack on fishing trips and begins teaching the boy how to draw. Jack continues to refer to him as Uncle Arthur and doesn’t seem phased to see the three of them exchanging caresses and lingering glances. Still, they school him not to speak of it outside of the house. Jack, thankfully, is used to keeping secrets.

Occasionally Arthur rides out on their behalf, scouting the lands around the ranch for rustlers and thieves. He keeps his guns oiled in their defense. 

One day, almost a year after he arrived in their lives, Arthur receives a letter from Dutch. He doesn’t disclose the contents to either of them, but John manages to guess what it means. 

He’s waiting for Arthur in the yard as Arthur walks his horse out of the barn, head wreathed in cigarette smoke and lit by the sliver of moon. And it’s his turn to catch Arthur’s arm.

And he asks him to stay. 

Arthur sits on the horse for a long moment, but it doesn’t take half that long to arrive at a decision. He’s so tired of running. He climbs down off of the horse and wraps his arms around John, burying his face in John’s hair.

And he stays.

He burns the letter and stays with John and Abigail, and sleeps, that night and every night afterwards, between them. A voyaging ship come finally to harbour. A horse arriving at a warm stable.

At home, at last.


End file.
